As Siena Construction celebrates 35 years of building in 2026, we’re looking back at some of the projects and places that have shaped our company and the communities we serve. Today we’re looking at the neighborhood that’s been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.”

Kendall Square has undergone many transformations that reflect the evolution of Greater Boston. Originally a salt marsh along the Charles River, the neighborhood became an industrial district in the early/mid 20th century, with manufacturing facilities and industrial warehouses filling the area between the MIT and Harvard campuses.

In the 1980s and 90s, developers began transforming these industrial spaces into offices, retail, life sciences, and biotechnology research facilities. As this map of our building experience in Kendall shows, Siena has been part of the neighborhood since the beginning of our company. When Siena was founded in 1991, we were in the right place at the right time, helping to reshape the area through building-wide redevelopments and ground-up construction projects:

✅ 270 Albany Street
✅ 675 West Kendall Street
✅ 320 Bent Street
✅ 45-75 Sidney Street

Our engagement has continued through lab and office interior fit-outs throughout the biotech cluster. Our clients include many of the world’s leading life science organizations – Moderna, Pfizer, GSK, Takeda, Novartis, Amgen, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Broad Institute, Whitehead Institute, to name a few – as well as smaller startups that grew out of research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

While Kendall Square has become known as a life science hub, community organizations have also played an important role in making this part of town an equitable and welcoming place for residents and visitors.

In recent years, Siena has helped build out dining, retail, and hospitality spaces such as Kendall Square Cinema, MIT Museum, Squeaky Beaker Café, Discovery Café, Naco Taco, and University Stationery. We’ve also worked on community-based employment support space at Job Connector and recreational spaces like Kendall Skate’s Skating Rink.

As a Cambridge-based company from day one, we’re proud to be members of the Kendall Square Association, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing the vibrancy, equity, and inclusiveness of the neighborhood. Whether through our design-build work on KSA’s Little Free Library kiosks or exhibiting our geodesic sphere at the Cambridge Science Carnival, we’re grateful to have played a small part in the growth of Kendall Square as a welcoming place for visitors and residents.

We’re reflective of many ways our construction projects have become part of a changing neighborhood. We’re thankful to have been here for a part of that story, and look forward to seeing what comes next for Kendall Square, City of Cambridge, and the people who call them home.

Note – Map image courtesy of City of Cambridge’s Geographic Information System (GIS).